Cardi B didn’t hold back when she took the witness stand Wednesday (Oct. 19) in a lawsuit claiming her sexually-suggestive album cover left a man “humiliated,” repeatedly sparring with an opposing attorney, requesting “receipts” and claiming her accuser is “harassing” her in hopes of scoring a settlement.

The rapper’s testimony came in an unusual case filed by Kevin Brophy, a California man who claims parts of his back tattoo was unwittingly photoshopped onto the cover of Cardi’s 2016 mixtape Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 to make it look like he was performing oral sex on the now-superstar.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Cardi and Brophy’s attorney, A. Barry Cappello, battled repeatedly. At two different points during their sparring, the judge dismissed the jurors from the courtroom to calm the bickering down. On the second dismissal, things got so heated that the judge told Cappello he had “totally crossed the line,” and even threatened to declare a mistrial after jurors had left the courtroom.

Earlier in the day, Brophy’s attorneys said they had sent the star a cease-and-desist seeking to have the image removed – prompting Cardi to fire back that the case was really about money, not changes to an album cover.

“This is not about taking anything down. Y’all have been harassing me for $5 million,” the star said to Cappello. Cardi later noted that the mixtape did not even earn that much, and her cut was even less.

The star also took exception to the suggestion that Brophy’s image on the cover had somehow contributed to her meteoric success over the past decade – a key part of his legal case against her. She said she had been “working my ass off [for] two kids” and that it’s “really insulting to me as a woman that a man is claiming responsibility.”

Released in 2016, the cover image of Gangsta Bitch certainly raised eyebrows. In it, the then-rising star is seen taking a swig of a large beer, staring directly into the camera with her legs spread wide and holding a man’s head while he appears to perform oral sex on her.

The actual man in the image was a model who had consented to the shoot, but a giant tattoo on the man’s back belonged to Brophy. Unbeknownst to Cardi, a freelance graphic designer had typed “back tattoos” into Google Image, found one that fit (Brophy’s), and Photoshopped it onto the model’s body. It apparently didn’t occur to him that he would need anyone’s approval to do so.

Brophy sued in 2017 for millions in damages, claiming he was “devastated, humiliated and embarrassed” by the cover. He says Cardi and others violated his so-called right of publicity by using his likeness without his consent, and also violated his right to privacy by casting him in a “false light” that was “highly offensive.”

Cardi’s legal team has argued those accusations are “sheer fantasy” and “vastly overblown” – and that Brophy is just suing her in an effort to “cash in the legal equivalent of a lotto ticket.” Her legal team says nobody would have recognized a relatively unknown man based merely on his back, and that he has little proof anyone did.

The trial kicked off on Tuesday, when Brophy testified that Cardi’s “raunchy” image had caused severe stress on his life. He called it a “complete slap in the face” that had caused him “hurt and shame.”

But at Wednesday’s hearing, Cardi pointed out from the witness stand that the model in the image was “a Black man that’s fit” who has hair. Brophy is white with a shaved head.

“It’s not Mr. Brophy’s back. It doesn’t look like Mr. Brophy at all,” she told Cappello. “There has been not one receipt he has provided in the court claiming, ‘Hey, that’s you on Cardi’s mixtape.’”

Wednesday’s proceedings also featured testimony by Brophy himself and his wife, as well as Cardi’s former manager Klenord “Shaft” Raphael. Testimony will continue on Thursday, with a verdict expected on Friday.

In a sea of out-of-left-field hit songs this year (Kate Bush, anyone?), David Guetta and Bebe Rexha‘s “I’m Good (Blue)” stands out as one of the most unpredictable.

Guetta and Rexha’s throwback dance-floor filler interpolates Eiffel 65’s 1999 novelty hit “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” (itself an unexpected success story), and as Rexha tells Katie & Keith on the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast (listen to the new episode below), the collab was actually made years ago and then unearthed by savvy fans.

“[David] had played it at a festival after we had cut it, and somebody took a YouTube video of it and posted it,” Rexha recalls. “Then somebody found that and made a remix and posted it to TikTok. Then this big gamer posted it from TikTok, and then it blew up from her page.

“It’s crazy, because you just never know what people want,” she adds. “Everybody was going crazy and being like, ‘We want this song! Why can’t we find it?’ And I was hitting up David [saying], ‘David, people really want this record! We should just put it out!’ At this point, it’s viral on TikTok, and people are asking for it. Let’s just give the people what they want. Let’s not judge it for what it is, and just put it out. It’s just a great, fun record.”

Now that great, fun record is on quite the ride up our charts, climbing 18-16 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100, holding at No. 2 on both the Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts, and spending a fourth week atop Hot Dance/Electronic Songs. Rexha is marveling at the song’s global success and trying to piece together the secret to its popularity.

“Never did I think in a million years that it would be so big,” she says. “I guess people want to feel that 2000s nostalgia, especially after the three years of a pandemic and being cooped in their houses. It brings back that feeling of nostalgia, and it makes you feel kind of warm. I will put my hands up on this one and say I get it, but I’m also confused and shocked, but also very grateful.”

Although Rexha just released her sophomore album Better Mistakes last year, she hinted to fans on Twitter last week that her next project might be out sooner than they think – but she wants to give her hit with Guetta a little space before putting out the “very focused” new project.

“I’m not gonna lie: ‘I’m Good’ has thrown a little bit of a wrench into the whole plan,” she tells the Pop Shop Podcast. “I’m trying to let ‘I’m Good’ have its moment. But the one thing that’s really good about my project is that it does have dance elements to it. It has rock as well as dance elements to it. It’s inspired by one of my favorite female artists of all time. ”

Let the guessing games begin!

Here are a few more hints about the album: “I really spent a lot of time studying this time period and what this artist was saying and how she said it. And then how she said it when she was with her band and by herself, and I really want to make sure that it’s a real artist project. I think it was a natural evolution. I love rock music, and I love dance music. I was like: ‘How can I evolve naturally?,’ because I’m not a child anymore. I’m a grown woman, so this felt like a really great natural growth for me.”

Next up: Rexha will hit the Jingle Ball Los Angeles stage on Dec. 2 at The Forum in Inglewood, Calif.

Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how Doja Cat gets her sixth top 10 hit on the Hot 100 with “Vegas” while Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit” holds atop the list for a third straight week. Meanwhile, Glass Animals’ former No. 1 “Heat Waves” marks another milestone in its storied chart career, becoming the song with the most week ever on the Hot 100 — collecting its 91st week on the chart. And, on the Billboard 200 albums chart, Stray Kids notch their second No. 1 album (and second of this year!), while new albums from Quavo & Takeoff, G. Herbo and Charlie Puth all debut in the top 10.

Katie & Keith also take time to chat about all the Grammy controversies that bubbled up after preliminary ballots were sent to voters last week. From Nicki Minaj and Silk Sonic to The Weeknd and Drake, these were the biggest headlines from the ballots.

The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)

The king of heartbreak is back. Lewis Capaldi took to Instagram on Tuesday (Oct. 18) to reveal that his sophomore album, Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent will be arriving on May 19, 2023.

In addition, the star will be embarking on a global tour, which kicks off on January 14 in Leeds, England, and will stretch across Europe until March 15 in Munich, Germany. On March 30, Capaldi will cross the pond to begin his North American tour in Nashville, Tenn., on March 30. His US dates wrap up on May 11 in Houston, Texas, before he heads off to Australia and New Zealand.

Capaldi revealed on Instagram that he is signing the first 2000 copies of his album that have been pre-ordered.

The announcement comes just a month after Capaldi welcomed his sophomore album’s era with the emotive “Forget Me” and its ironically goofy music video.

Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent is a follow-up to Capaldi’s debut album Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent, which landed the 26-year-old star his first Grammy nomination for the album’s breakthrough single, “Someone You Loved,” which was up for song of the year at the 2020 ceremony.

The album peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard 200 and spent an impressive 177 weeks total on the chart. “Someone You Loved,” meanwhile, topped the Hot 100 chart for three weeks, and spent 54 weeks total on the chart. Capaldi’s debut album’s second single, “Before You Go,” peaked at No. 9 on the Hot 100 dated September 26, 2020.